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Madrona Venture Labs’ final team photo. Mike Fridgen, MVL’s former managing director, is in the center. (MVL Photo)
Madrona Venture Labs is being absorbed into Seattle’s Madrona venture firm after operating for more than 10 years as an independent startup studio.
The news comes one week after Madrona announced that it has raised $770 million for investing in a new batch of tech startups.
Since launching in 2014, MVL incubated 30 startups, with those companies collectively raising hundreds of millions of dollars in funding. Participants include Uplevel, Strike Graph, OutboundAI, Magnify, Pendulum, Codified, Chatitive and others.
MVL’s mission was to support founders who were looking to vet their ideas, help match startups with leaders, work with entrepreneurs-in-residence and provide funding for new ventures.
With the organizational restructuring, “all of the activities and strategies are now in the mother ship,” said Tim Porter, Madrona’s managing director.
When the studio was formed, Seattle’s startup ecosystem was less robust and there were limited resources for new companies to plug into. That’s changed over time. The area is now home to incubators including AI2 Incubator; Pioneer Square Labs; the University of Washington’s CoMotion Labs; Seattle Foundations, a shared workspace supporting tech founders; and others.
The original decision to form a startup studio alongside a venture firm was “not completely unique,” Porter said, “but it’s not very common either.”
At this point, there were inefficiencies in running MVL as a separate entity, he added, so leadership decided “let’s do it all within one roof, one team, one funding vehicle.”
The timing of the restructuring made sense, he said, given the recent announcement of the firm’s tenth fund. In the past, Madrona would carve off some dollars for MVL’s efforts when a new fund closed.
Mike Fridgen, who was managing director of MVL for nine years, is becoming chief operating officer for Rover — a Seattle-based pet sitting platform and former Madrona portfolio company that was acquired last year. Fridgen will also serve as a part-time Madrona venture partner.
Madrona is working with MVL’s other seven employees to help them find roles at Madrona-backed companies or elsewhere. Startups and founders engaging with the incubator will continue their work at Madrona.
“I’m very proud of what we built and what this team created in terms of the community and the companies and the founder connection that we had,” Fridgen said.
Fridgen and Porter emphasized that the closure of MVL did not mean Madrona was backing away from its support of emerging startups or companies based in the Pacific Northwest.
The firm is splitting the new fund between two investing vehicles: a traditional fund for early-stage startups (about 60% of the $770 million), and an “acceleration fund” for more mature companies, including those that it may have previously missed backing.
Madrona expects to invest 75% of its new fund in Pacific Northwest companies, and the rest outside the region.
Related: Madrona raises $770M for new funds — here’s what the Seattle VC firm is betting on
